


The Compendium Archipelago

by Prochytes



Series: Three Impossible Solutions [3]
Category: Lost, The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 08:03:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10509681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: There’s only one of anything, here. One raven. One library. One art. One gift. One game.One island.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on a now-defunct website, in 2006. Some disturbing imagery.

He was aware. He knew that he was aware, and not much else. Conscious of consciousness, but little besides.

 

He couldn’t believe that he had survived the crash. With the general vagueness of his current perceptions, though, this incredulity lacked an edge. Crediting needed a resolve, a flexing, as it were, of mental sinew, to which he was at the moment unequal. Far better, then, to dandle in the buoyant medium of the incredible, the vague.

 

 _Vague_ was the French for “wave”. Waves scoured his hearing incessantly, and it occurred to him that there was nothing vague about them: the acrid tang, the scalded alley-cat hiss. Presently he would have to move his head, and look at them. He knew that his thoughts were as inconsequential as that pair of black trousers about thirty feet away, draped negligently across a bright spur of fusilage. Perhaps he was concussed.

 

Perhaps it was worse. Maybe, when he did get around to moving his head, he would look down to see his body a cat’s cradle of fraying flesh and bone and nerve. It struck him that he had no idea what colour muscle was, when you peeled away its epidermal business suit. He wished it hadn’t.

 

“The plane! The plane!”

 

His head turned sharply. His eyes widened. Now he knew he was concussed.

 

“Sorry, couldn’t resist. Bad taste, I know. But when you consider what I am – and I can see by the expression on your face that that’s taking up most of your headroom just this minute – it might be worse. A lot worse. Imagine all the things I _could_ be tasting right now…”

 

A person was screaming, behind the dune. Not continuously, but in short, churning gasps, like someone trying to start an outboard motor. His interlocutor continued:

 

“…and look at it this way, at least you won’t be running into a mysterious millionaire in a white suit. I think. Unless you really want to, I s’ppose.”

 

“But you’re a…a…”

 

“A raven. Or, more accurately, _the_ raven. There’s only one of anything, here. One raven. One library. One art. One gift. One game. One island.”

 

The screaming stopped. Its cease was somehow worse than continuance. Petrol smells bloomed on the air. He blinked.

 

“Is that where I…where we are? An island?”

 

“ _The_ island, doofus. The island that has been all islands. The Compendium Archipelago.”

 

“The what?”

 

“Thermoscyra. Avalon. The Summer Country. They were all it, each in turn, until…”

 

“Until…?”

 

“Until the men with maps came to them, and found what they were, or what they weren’t. Painful thing, getting ‘not’-ed. Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

 

With the end of the screams, an erratic throbbing drummed the air. One of the plane’s engines, he realized, still flailing, somewhere beyond the dune. The senile dementia of locomotive steel. He took a breath.

 

“That’s…insane.”

 

“I’ll let you be the judge of that, bro. After all, you’re the one who’s getting arsey with a talking bird. Maybe you _are_ losing it. Maybe you and your pals over the next dune are going to go mad, eat each other, and start worshipping a dead pig. Maybe there’s a gorilla the size of a house pacing around up there in the woods, ready to rage, ready to love, ready to die, gearing up for its ape-shit swan-song. That’s what the island is _for_ , its _job_. Somewhere for anything to happen in.”

 

The smoke ruffling from beyond the dune was the colour of greasy black feathers. He looked away.

 

“Why are you telling me all this?”

 

“Because it doesn’t matter. What’s your name?”

 

“I…I don’t remember.”

 

“Thought so. You’ll get it back when it’s needed. _Your_ job, here and now, is to bear witness. We don’t have to know which of them you are. And you won’t mention it later on, of course, ’cos no one in his right mind wants to own up to getting colloquial with corvidae. No impact on the story, and so this little interlude is just a riff. Doodling in the margins of His Lordship’s brother’s book. And now, gotta dash…”

 

“Why?”

 

The bright eye looked almost sad. “Because as well as being _the_ raven, I’m _a_ raven. Now I have to do what ravens do. You don’t have to watch. Good luck.”

 

“I…”

           

But his knees buckled, and the sun slid away. For a time, he slept.

 

And the evening and the morning were the first day.

 

FINIS


End file.
